We are definitely focusing way too much on “school skills.”  NCLB, Westest, end course exams, and all those other names for high stakes testing and ratings have created this monster.   The answers are far beyond this, but as long as legislators set the rules, we have to jump through the hoops they place in front of us. 

Since I am not a core subject teacher, I have a little less pressure than many of my colleagues, so I can focus a little more on practical lessons.  My field, now Family and Consumer Sciences, was once known as practical arts.  The nature of the subject which I teach is beneficial to teaching real world skills and the projects we complete have a little more balance that many other classes.  Yet we still have to get the students to master basic skills to be able to apply them to the problems they face. 

Currently my answer to the dilemma lies is focusing more and earlier on the need for vocational and career education.  We have to realize that the majority of kids are not going to college and they need real job skills to support themselves until the can find themselves as responsible adults.  Waiting until the majority reach the 11^th grade to put them in “practical arts” means we lose way too many before they get a chance. 

I’m at a loss.  I’m racking my brain and writing lots of words on paper while waiting for the computer to restart after it chose this moment to install updates.  And even that time doesn’t give me a story I’m dying to tell.  Something comes to mind, and I guess I’ll write about that.  I was divorced when my children were very young.  Leah, now almost 28, was 4 and Josh, now within day of his 25^th birthday was one.  We spent a lot of time as the single mother family and we were getting along well.  I wasn’t opposed to remarriage, but my forays into the dating world left me with less than desirable memories that had no future, to speak of.  So, when someone would ask me why I wasn’t dating or what I was looking for, I would state that I wanted someone who was rich and had a hairy chest.  Now you young puppies will be appalled at the hair thing, but remember, I’m older.  That was the thing back in my day.  I said this frequently, and I’m sure my kids heard it often.  So, one evening, the kids were in the living room watching some TV and I was doing something in the kitchen.  I heard lots of giggling—they were about 9 and 6 years old, I guess.  So, I went to check and see what was going on.  They were standing with Leah in front and Josh slightly behind her.  I began to quiz them.  They then proceed to tell me that they had found the man for me.  I was amazed.  I didn’t really want anyone, but they evidently felt the need to have that male presence in the household as well as those visits with their father, so I replied, okay, who?  Well, it was like a guessing game.  They started to giggle and I said, “Ok, guys, tell me, who.”  Leah then passes the buck to Josh.  Mom, he says, “We know he’s rich, cause he’s on TV.”  Wow, did my mind leap.  Of course their giggles and this pronouncement meant I was safe from commitment, but I thought of Tom Sellick or some other hunk that came over the airwaves.  So I prodded further, “Who? come on guys, tell me.”  So then, Josh drops the second fact—he must have a hairy chest because he’s hairy all over.  My mind just froze—who is hairy all over, was it not only going to be a hairy chest they had in mind, but the hairy back also?  Ewwww?  Then, Josh decided to put me out of my misery.  He shouted out, “It’s ALF!”

Imagine my relief, as I explained that I was very sorry but I could not pursue this relationship.  If Alf were to come into our house, he would eat the cat, and then where would we be? 

It was Mother’s Day weekend, 1996.  The elementary school where I taught took educational field trips each year.  The sixth graders were the primary focus, but if seats were unsold, we would open it to fifth graders.  Each year we would rotate from the trip to Washington, D. C. to Williamsburg and Colonial Virginia.  I assisted with these and made sure my children went, since I had been on a similar trip when I was in sixth grade.  Now that I think back to that trip, there’s a topic I could have written about yesterday.  It was one of the happiest times of my life.  But, I digress.  As events would have it, our elementary school was being closed due to consolidation.  Some of the sixth grade parents wanted to go out with a bang, so they wanted a New York Trip.  The other sixth grade teacher and I got with our local tour guide and made the arrangements.  Going on this trip was a big deal.  At that time, in that community school, we could do all kinds of fund raising so that anyone who really wanted their kid, or themselves, to go, could find a way.  There was this boy, great big, built like a lineman for a football team whose Mother was supporting them with public assistance.  She wanted him, I’ll call him Duke, to go.  So, they were at every bake sale, hot dog sale, and car wash.  She took boxes of 50 cent candy bars and sold them faithfully door to door in the neighborhood.   She made regular monthly payments from her meager check to watch the balance slowly move down, and when it was paid off, kept working so he would have spending money.  I learned that his Father was dead, shot by someone who was now in prison.  He was average intelligence, not outstanding by any means in class, well, except for being the biggest boy there.

So, we went on the trip.  On the way up, he was in front of me on the bus.  Several times I asked what he was saying, and he would mutter….” nothing.”  Then, unexpectedly her turned around and asked me to be sure and wake him up when we got out of WV, since he’d never been out of the state.  Hearing that wasn’t eye-opening enough.  As I sat there, quiet pervaded the area, and listening carefully, I heard as he muttered to himself, “I can’t believe I’m going to New York City.

Fast forward to the next morning.  After a night in a hotel where I learned he had never spent a night before, we got to our first attraction, The Statue of Liberty.  As we exited the ferry he was walking in front of me.  When we passed the gift shop/restaurant building and turned right on the pavement, there she was:  Lady Liberty right in front of us.  Duke stopped dead in front of me.  I almost bounced off him, thinking that kids should have tail lights like cars.  But then, as he continued standing there, I wondered what it would take to get him to move.  But in a moment frozen in time, I heard him say,

“I never in my life thought I’d be somewhere in person that’s pictures are in books.”

What did I learn?  Learning can take place anywhere, and one of those places may be where we least expect it.  When I think about field trips, I try to remember to see it from the perspective of the kids—this may be a first for them, and what worlds will it open to them?

When?  Where?  Happiest?  Have I been the happiest?  I think I am happy most of the time.  I, like Paul in the New Testament, have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I may find myself.  Truly happy?  I’m thinking?  Was it childhood when troubles and cares were scarce and someone else had all the responsibilities?  Was it when I made my commitment to be a Christian?  Was it when I was young and in love?

Maybe it was when either of my children was born?  Or is it yet to come?  I don’t really know that I can say one time is happier than all the rest.  It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy.  Evidence of this is shown when I do something on the computer.  Karen, Mike and Bart will smile because I get so excited.  It might have been the day Leah graduated from college, but I think that was pride more than happiness, and that day got messed up with Josh’s trauma.  Was it somewhere, sometime on a vacation?  Is it when I see the thrill in a kid’s face when I take them somewhere they’ve never been?   I think the happiest is yet to come.  There is a lot of happy centered around family events, holidays, dinners and the such, but each of them gets shadowed by things like the relative who has died and is missing at the table or the simple tiredness, no exhaustion, form getting ready for the great event, whatever it is.  Yes, I think the happiest is yet to come:  when all of this life has passed away and we move to a new plane of existence.  I call that place Heaven.  I do think that I will be there and I hope that all of my family and friends will also.  That will be the happiest.  There will be only joy—no sadness—no sorrow.  Many scoff.  How can that be, since surely someone that I love won’t be there.  I’m not worried about that.  Maybe that person won’t be in my memory banks.  Their absence won’t be noted, because that’s like an empty chair at dinner.  We miss the person who sat there in this time and place, but we won’t there.  I can’t explain it.  I also can’t explain how the Red Sea rolled back and manna appeared six days a week, but I don’t doubt the certainty of it. 

I’m trying to analyze why this is hard for me to address.  I think it’s because I don’t want to admit that one time is happier than all the others.  I also am afraid that I will have to stir up old memories that have been put away for a reason.  They have been looked at, and with the happiness comes sorrow.  Is it true that we can’t experience one without the other.  Oh, such deep thoughts.  Jack Handy would have a field day with all this.  Peggy, I’m sending messages–it’s time to call time.  Time to call time—funny how we play with words. 

Texts?  What?  Me read a textbook?  Do research?   The way I learn is the way I think.  I don’t do just one thing at a time.  I am ADHD, before it was identified and named, and I frequently don’t think about just one thing at time, so I don’t just start a book that I consider a text and read from start to finish.  I save that for my escapism romance novels. 

When I get a text to read, I will look through it:  then I will skim and scan and choose a section to read.  It may be just a paragraph that jumps off the page into my eyes.   It was this way with the book Write for Insight.  Last summer one of the groups used it for a book study.  I was on another book, but when they talked about it, I had a copy to peruse for a few minutes and said I wanted that book.  I learn from texts things that I had been exposed to in the past, but haven’t taken fully into my ‘bag of tricks.”  I will see it and then somehow it fits into my schemata or diagram of learning.  I have been reading through the Write for Insight and it just reinforces the knowledge from my past that we need to write to learn.  So, now I’m throwing around the idea of learning logs for my classes.  I don’t think about something and plan it out.  I sort of read it, add it to that boiling cauldron of ideas in my head, and just wait.  In a few days or few hours, it will start to bubble to the surface, and I’ll deal with it.  Then it will go out of sight and out of mind for a while, and then come back.  That’s the way I work it into the way I can use it in my classroom.  Eventually those thoughts will have to be put down on paper—lots of time with a pencil, since they are still work in progress, and then let cool off for a while.  I do this with texts also.  Read a little; put it on a table and just look at it as I walk by, and maybe pick it up a few days/weeks later.  That’s what I mean when I say I don’t read a book cover to cover.    Now that I think about it, authors don’t write books cover to cover—so why should I read them that way. 

  I am Mr.Child of television’s creativityWho lives in reels of tape and the hearts and minds of-        Tri-State cartoon loversWho loves the laughter and admiration of childrenWho needs the disguise of a plaid jacket and hatWho fears being outed as the weather manWho hates the loss of innocenceCartoon  I am BeeperChild of Hanna BarberraWho lives in a fur mascot suitWho loves the yucket bucketWho needs a voiceWho fears being seen with his head offWho hates being caught at pranksFriend of Mr. Cartoon                              

            Or, your favorite childhood memory

I got my first Barbie doll somewhere about age 9 or 10.  That was the norm then, not like today, when Barbies are given to preschoolers and adult women spend a week’s wages on collector models.  It was a Christmas gift so important that it is captured forever in black and white photos taken by my sister. She was a pony-tailed blonde with pearl post earrings.   She wore a black and white striped bathing suit and had white heeled pumps.  I loved Barbie.  I played Barbie all the time.  She was to me what video games are to today’s kids.  When she came, there was just one more outfit and subsequent holidays brought a couple more, hand picked from the description in the Sears catalog.  I wanted still more.  They were expensive.  Mom did buy me a beautiful red velvet cape and pill box hat to wear over her party dress so the poor girl wouldn’t freeze.  Many of my friends had more clothes, and like every child, I needed more.  However, we were a one income dad working mom stay at home family and there was little extra for frivolities of doll clothes that cost as much outfits for my sister and me.  Well, one Christmas Eve, my present was the best that I or anyone in the family had ever gotten.  I had a whole entire wardrobe for Barbie.  There were everyday clothes, a couple of dresses, a pair of pants, a marvelous ecru lace trimmed white satin wedding gown, and a tweed wood coat with matching hat.  Barbie was every bit as stylish as Jackie Kennedy on TV.  I was delighted.  How did this come about?  Well, Mom had ordered a pattern for   “12” fashion doll” clothes from an ad at the back of the newspaper.  When she got it, she scavenged hers and her family’s rag bags and fabric remnants for just the right materials.  She then spent long hours and miniscule stitches to create, by hand the marvelous array of designer clothing.  She did this while I was at school or late at night by bedside lamplight. My friends were impressed.  I was top of the world.  I was in conspicuous consumption heaven, but I had a heavy heart.  I was hiding a secret.  I was a snoop.  Some weeks before, the anticipation of the upcoming holiday got the best of me.  I was home alone and I went looking.  I just couldn’t wait to see what “Santa” would bring—so I snooped.  I looked in the clothes press.  I looked in the wardrobe.  I looked in forbidden drawers.  I looked under the beds and there was the treasure.  I saw the work in progress and was awestruck—but I couldn’t tell anyone.  So I kept the secret and when the presents were opened and Mom admitted that she had “put her eyes out” with those tiny creations I acted like I had no prior knowledge and was surprised speechless.  I guess this was when I took the stage for the first of many times.

            Or  What would you like to change about Public Education?

What concerns me most, yes even more that low salaries, is the ‘Big Brother is Watching You” threat that has come about with the extreme emphasis on testing.  High Stakes Testing.  The importance of the results of  “The Test” has  created sets of standards that dictate that we teach to the test.  I don’t care how that state it, we teach to the test.  The items on the test are taken from those standards and we have banks of sample and release items to use with classes to be sure that students master those items and those objectives. 

So where does that lead?  It leads, I fear greatly, into a world of sameness.  Lois Lowry looked at it in The Giver, Gathering Blue, and The Messenger.  Many educators will say, “Oh, that can’t happen,” but it can.  About three or four years ago, the state decided that the back to school staff development days would be standardized throughout.  Yes, the whole state.  They brought teachers from every county to Charleston, from every discipline.  Then , they gave them notebooks—scripted power point presentations.  To insure uniformity of information, those teachers were instructed to follow the script—word for word.  It happened, I was there.  Or, shall I say, I was here.  Within counties they had lead teachers present for the core subjects, but related arts, electives, etc., had to report to RESA presentations.  The Vo-Tech people from all of RESA II filled the Cabell County VO-Tech Center to be indoctrinated with whatever policy that the State Dept. mandated should be covered at that time.  We also have developed curriculum maps that say what objective should be taught and when during the course of the year so if a student moves from one school to the next they won’t miss concepts.  Yeah, like they are all going to be there all 180 days of instruction.  What a dream world.  Then, we’re developeing Essential Questions that are standardized and we’re developing 21^st century lessons plans that are standardized.  They tell us to use these as tools, that the text is a resource, not the only source, but if you’ve got a map telling you when to teach something and the same book as everyone else and then these wonderful, hint of sarcasm, lessons plans—what are the chances that this too will become standardized.  I fear that abefore too long they will have a notebook, a script and a power point presentation for all the content standards in the core subjects.  What happened to the individual giftedness of those awesomely wonderful TEACHERS?  It can’t become so standardized that we lose the sight of the individuality of each teacher and each student.   I fight the system.  I do things my own way.  If I was in the core subject classrooms, I would fight even harder, I think.  We have too many law makers and politicians whose views of education are limited to their own twelve years of public education and too many State Dept Administation who haven’t sat in  a classroom in ten or even twenty years making decisions.  Ultimately teaching kids is not like selling blueberries!

Oh the thoughts that go through our heads:  we look for a hidden meaning, a good laugh, and opportunity to relate to someone.  So where do I go—I think I’m in love with life.  I love the life that God has given me.  It’s totally unlike what he gave anyone else.  It’s just me.  I love being around people.  I love meeting new people.  I love when a plan comes together.  I love when someone lets me know they like being around me.  I love getting to know students and peers as friends: when we go deeper that just a greeting and we start to talk about things that make us happy and unhappy.  I love when kids I’ve had before come up to me and want a hug, or see me in a store and tell me what they are doing in their life or show me a new baby.  I love when they talk to me and remember what they did in my class—even if I can’t remember their names.  I love to travel.  I love to see new places and do new things.  I love exploring streets and avenues that have unfamiliar names or buildings.  I love to learn.  I really love when I learn something new.  I know we look for that “aha” on kids’ faces, and I love that, but I love even more when I feel it on my face.  I love God.  I love my family, my daughter, my son, his fiancée, my sister, my ancient cat and my grumpy old dog.  I love trying new things.  I love to eat out and try foods that are new or revisit tastes that are unique to places.  I love being.  I know life isn’t perfect and there are trials, tribulations, and difficulties, but I love when the solution becomes visible.   I, like Paul in the Bible, have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I may find myself.  I love feeling happy.  I love laughter.  Laughter is so much a part of my life.  I love to make people laugh and love to feel the joy and the release of a good belly laugh or uncontrollable laughter that makes me cry. 

If my mother told me once, she told me a million times, “Tone it down, Diana Lynn, tone it down.”  Now in mother talk, that is interpreted to mean that you are talking way too loudly, so quite your voice.  I have since learned that tone is more that volume, but even though I reached adulthood and parenthood myself before she passed away, I never thought to ask her if she was referring only to the loudness or if she was also talking about the inflection of my voice. 

So, where does that leave me today—with the realization that I am loud.  I am a loud person.  I talk loudly.  I laugh loudly.  I walk loudly.  I dress loudly.  I exist and live loudly.  I am not a wallflower shrinking into the background.  I am up front, out in the open, ready and willing to take center stage.  I listen to people with soft voices like Kathy, and am jealous. The pleasant quietness of her voice carrries, but doesn’t grate on the ears and nerves like my voice does.  I’m the person at church, when we have those fellowship dinners and showers, or the one in Faculty Senate, that people look to and say, “Diana, tell them all we’re ready to start.”

God gives us all talents, some of them are easily seen, mine is easily heard.